Wow. It's been a long time since I posted anything here but life has thrown me a few curves lately, health wise. Having a pretty good day today so thought I might see how long I can last sitting in front of the computer.

Had an interesting conversation with my daughter last night. I'd been telling her about my container gardening efforts...10 of those Home Depot buckets. Last time I tried to grow tomatoes, it was a dismal failure as we have so many bugs here in Florida, especially nematodes, which apparently love veggie plants. Yes, I know tomatoes are technically a fruit but we use them as veggies. ANYWAY, I digress.

So I'm telling her about my tomato plants that I hand pollinated yesterday. They're all in those orange HD buckets. I drilled holes in the bottom and in the sides, mixed the Miracle Grow soil with sand to enhance drainage and they're growing like crazy. My pool deck looks like an advertisement for Home Depot...lol.

She was all "Yum" and then told me she and her hubby bought into a crop club. They pay X amount of dollars and get X amount of fresh veggies and fruit when harvest comes around. Never heard about that before but it's pretty cool.She has lots of memories of puttering around the garden and eating tomatoes right off the vine, still warm from the sun.

We talked about canning veggies, which I used to do when she was little. We always had a garden. Had two, actually, and grew tomatoes, green beans, carrots, beets, edible pod sweet peas (so dang good), cukes, kolrabi, and even our own horseradish. I was a canning fool. I even used to make my own ketchup, if you can believe that. I now know what to get them for their anniversary...she wants a boiling water bath cooker and a pressure canner. And she wants to grow herbs so I told her how I did it, just in pots on the patio. Not only do they make your food taste yummy, they're so pretty. Especially the dill and rosemary plants.

My little potted herb garden consists of: two flat leaf Italian parsley plants, cilantro, dill, rosemary, and Greek thyme. Oh man, that Greek thyme is good. I also have a stevia plant. Only one because I hear they can be temperamental to grow so wanted to see how it goes before I totally commit to stevia. If it does well, I can clone the plant and grow as many as I want, so I'm kinda jazzed. Jazzed about the tomato plants my wonderful sister picked up for me, too, but she got a flat of 8 and I don't know what the hell I'm gonna do with 8 producing tomato plants. Will have to get a food mill and turn the extras into juice to make soups and sauces with, I guess. Two of them are cherry tomatoes, and that's my favorite snack food. One beefsteak for kitchen sink tomato sandwiches. And they're all heirloom tomatoes so I can collect the seeds for next year's crop. Take that Monsanto and Con Agra, you GMO turds.

So, had a lovely little shower this morning and my babies are happy to have gotten a good drink. Sounds like the birds are happy too. Quite a few have come up to the pool for a drink and a quick bath. Deer have begun to come and feed off the jasmine hedge. They aren't particularly afraid of me and will feed on the hedges while I'm sitting on the patio. One even brought her baby with his little spotted butt. So cool. Man, country living is fine.